I want to tell you about a secret that I have held in my heart for 78 years. I pray it will encourage you to never lose hope. God works in mysterious ways, His he destiny of lives, families, cities and nations? The Bible states that the prayers of a righteous man avail much. It also says “seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all other things shall be added unto you”: I pondered those words and kept them in my heart. My life took a dramatic turn in July 2006.

I was born of pure Dutch ancestors. My father immigrated to America, followed by my mother, pregnant with me, and an older brother. My father worked on a dairy farm. When I was 1 ½- years-old, my sister was born. She was nine days old when my father drowned in a lake. With three babies, my mother, who had not yet mastered English, went to work for an elderly German farmer. Though she did not speak English, she spoke German as well as her native Dutch.

As children, we knew what it was to work – before and after school, from sun up to sun down. We hauled water, wood, and coal because those were the days of no running water, electricity, or gas in the homes. We picked potatoes, shucked wheat, corn and whatever else was planted that year. When I was fourteen, the man my mother worked for retired and she married another Dutchman. Together they started a dairy farm. Not only did he gain a wife, but three well-trained farmhands as well, who were good at milking cows.

When we graduated from eighth grade at our country schoolhouse we were told that high school was for city kids who had nothing else to do.

Attending high school was out of the question for us: we had too much work to do.